ABSTRACT
Interlacing varied approaches within Historical Ecology, this volume offers new routes to researching and understanding human–environmental interactions and the heterarchical power relations that shape both socioecological change and resilience over time. Historical Ecology draws from archaeology, archival research, ethnography, the humanities and the biophysical sciences to merge the history of the Earth’s biophysical system with the history of humanity.
Considering landscape as the spatial manifestation of the relations between humans and their environments through time, the authors in this volume examine the multi-directional power dynamics that have shaped settlement, agrarian, monumental and ritual landscapes through the long-term field projects they have pursued around the globe.
Examining both biocultural stability and change through the longue durée in different regions, these essays highlight intersectionality and counterpoised power flows to demonstrate that alongside and in spite of hierarchical ideologies, the daily life of power is heterarchical. Knowledge of transtemporal human–environmental relationships is necessary for strategizing socioecological resilience. Historical Ecology shows how the past can be useful to the future.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |8 pages
Historical Ecologies, heterarchies and transtemporal landscapes
part I|2 pages
Ideologies and applications of Historical Ecology and Heterarchy
part II|2 pages
Identifying resilience
chapter 5|18 pages
Reconstructing African landscape Historical Ecologies
chapter 6|17 pages
Resilience of agrarian land use practices in Burgundy, France
part III|2 pages
Social, settlement and territorial dynamics of the European Iron Age
chapter 9|20 pages
Humanizing the western Cantabrian Mountains in northwestern Iberia
chapter 10|19 pages
The end of Iron Age societies in northwestern Iberia
part IV|2 pages
Ritual landscapes and monumentality